グローバル金融危機は、2008年に欧米諸国を中心に起こった一連の金融危機である。2000年から2006年ごろまで高騰した欧米の住宅価格の反転を引き金に、住宅ローンの不良債権化と証券化商品の価格下落が起こり、米銀リーマンブラザーズの倒産が象徴するように、欧米の多くの金融機関が経営難に陥った。こうして金融市場で誰も資金の出し手にならなくなる金融危機が発生した。 危機発生のメカニズムは、まず、住宅ローン実行時に住宅価格依存した信用供与の安易さがあった。次に住宅ローンを担保にした証券化商品を販売する際、高リスク証券まで売却してしまったため、銀行の与信管理意識が失われてしまった。更に、証券化のプロセスで、多くの金融機関が役割を細かく分担し、それぞれ限られた分野で専門性を発揮し効率よく証券化を推進した。このため、資金の流れが複雑になり、全体像の把握が非常に困難になった。 危機後に始まった再発防止のためのルール作りは、金融機関に自己資本を厚く持たせ、資産劣化が起きた時に、個々の機関で処理できる力をつけさせようというものだ。しかし、国境を超えた金融業務が盛んな欧州では、危機対応のための費用負担の国別分担を巡り意見の不一致がある。また途上国を中心に、過度に厳しい金融規制は経済成長の阻害要因になるという反対意見が出ている。 証券化のビジネスモデルは、最終的な借り手と貸し手の間の業務プロセスを細かく分け、個々の業務において、それぞれの業者が高い専門性を発揮したからこそ、プロセス全体が高い生産性を発揮できるものだ。金融産業に限らず、人間の生産活動が等比数列的に成長を続けられた原動力は、この生産工程の細分化と専門化に依るところが大きい。 しかし、プロセスの分断ゆえに、一部で事故が起きた時に、誰も何が起きたのか即座に理解できず、全体がパニックに陥りやすい。金融の現場では、各人は要求された高い専門性を発揮するだけで精一杯である。また専門性を出すために業務領域は狭い範囲に限定されているため、全体がもたらす結果についての責任意識を持ち得なかった。 細分化と専門化は、経済発展の原動力でもあるだけに、そこに起因する金融危機を完全に予防することは難しい。再び起こることを前提に、発生した時の被害を最小限に止めるセーフティネット作りに各国が協力しコミュニケーションを深めていくことが重要だ。 The Global Financial Crisis is a series of financial crises which took place in the US and Europe in 2008. Soaring housing prices in the US and Europe from 2000 to around 2006 peaked out and triggered a rise of non-performing loans and fall of securitized financial products. Many banks suffered from huge losses in 2008 and the hardest case was a bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest American investment banks. No banks were willing to loan others and liquidities in financial markets dried out. The mechanism how crisis occurred was that there were easy credit practices heavily relying on housing prices at first. Then the originators of securitization lost an incentive to monitor the credit status of borrowers as they sold out an equity part of securitization, a part of the highest risk. Meanwhile, a whole process of securitization was divided in pieces so that each institution could concentrate one’s task in its narrow range with a high efficiency. As a result, the cash flow of the securitization business became extremely complicated and no one saw the whole picture of it. After the crisis, they started to make new regulations to prevent the same crisis from happening. The basic concept of the regulation was for banks to have more equity capitals so that they could absorb the shock of crisis by themselves. In Europe, however, a hot argument still continue regarding how they should share a fair burden sharing between countries where bankrupted banks explores a lot of cross-border businesses. In emerging countries, there is a criticism that too harsh regulation could harm developing countries where aggressive credit expansion is often needed for a growth. The business model of securitization hikes a profitability of finance because it divides a process of finance between an ultimate debtor and creditor into several steps so that those who are engaged in each part can extend their productivity in a full degree, which makes the whole financial business more productive. Not only financial businesses but all economic activities of human being are experiencing a productivity growth thanks to the mechanism of segmentalization and specialization. Because of this disintegration, people can easily fall in panic once an accident happen in a certain area of the whole process because no one know a picture of the integrated whole. In a financial business, each worker is at best able to fulfilling one’s specialized requirement. Such a requirement allows him or her to concentrate on a job assignment of an extremely narrow range. No one can expect such workers to have a conscious of being responsible for whole. Segmentalization and specialization are the source of productivity growth. Given a core cause of financial crisis lying there, you cannot completely prevent a crisis. It will happen again. We should be always prepared for the next. We can at best minimize the damage by having a close communication and cooperation between states to build up a safety nets.